hey all.. i was chatting with a bud of mine at work and he told me that he just acquired a 98 GP gt.. and we were going back and forth about our cars.. anyways, he asked if my car ran on dex-cool, and i told him yes, and thats when he said he was going to do a full flush and re-fill with just regular anti-freeze... i told him i did not think he could do that.. am i wrong? AND whats the pro/cons of dex-cool to regular??

While this type of question is often just flame-bait, I'll pretend you're serious.

Sure, you could flush out the Dex-cool. It might not be easy, but if you drained as much as you could and then power flushed it with water enough, you could do it and replace it with green glycol antifreeze. People here have mentioned that draining coolant from either the radiator petcock or by disconnecting the lower radiator hose will still leave a fair amount of coolant in the engine, so just doing that alone wouldn't be good enough.

And while there'* people out there who will swear green is better than Dex and that Dex killed their car, I'd have to say that used properly, either one is about as good as the other. All it has to do is cool and prevent corrosion, and used properly, they both do that. Keep it at the proper level and identify any coolant losses immediately, especially if you might have an intake manifold gasket failure, and you should be fine.

In general, I'd say there'* no advantage to changing from one coolant to the other. Stick with what you have and you should be fine. As further insurance, a drain of old coolant, replaced by new (of the same type) can't hurt, even though GM says Dex should last 100,000 miles or something like that.

Here is some fairly unbiased info on Dex-cool and other coolants.


http://www.coolprofits.com/articles/...ant/index.html

http://www.coolprofits.com/articles/...l-macs2001.htm

Interesting articles, ron350! Thanks.

atauri_92 - If you do decide to change over, rather than going back to the old "green stuff", yoyu may want to try the newer "all makes, all models" anti-freeze. It'* discussed in the "Extra, Extra...." portion of the link that ron350 provided.

I have to agree with Bugsi, he'* made several good points.

Just FYI, if you end up replacing Dex-cool with green coolant, just find a shop that has a coolant flushing machine. Specifically request that they replace the coolant with green, and you're set. Not only a very simple way to do it, but also a very beneficial way to increase your vehicle'* life. A clean cooling system is a happy cooling system.

Make sure back flushing is part of their process, if not I would request it.

When I put the new engine in my moms 98, I had the Radiator flushed and pressure checked, and I flushed the heater core on my own.

The motor was new, so it was dry.

I talked to a seal expert at our place, and he had recommended I switch, as apparently Gm was having issues with the DexCool on seals early on.

I dont know that to be truth, but that is what he told me.
He'* a very smart guy, knows his polymers, so I trusted him and switched it over.

C